Neil Turnbull

Neil is a Lecturer in Urban Design at the Welsh School of Architecture at Cardiff University. Neil’s PhD (2022, School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University) documented the emergence of communities taking on responsibility for running local authority owned assets, e.g., community and/or youth centres, in a process known as Community Asset Transfer (CAT). This work contextualised practice as both austerity driven and as a potential site of support and mutual aid for struggling communities. Neil works on alternative approaches to the built environment with communities of interest and/or place with current projects on community-led housing and community land management with colleagues in the UK and Chile, South America.   

In 2022 Neil worked on the Homelessness and LGBTQ+ People in Gwent Research with Tai Pawb and Dr Edith England for Gwent local authorities, Wales. This project won the national Wales Online Equality and Diversity Award 2022 for LGBTQ+ Champion / Initiative or Campaign of the year. Neil is currently working on a large-scale survey of the prevalence and patterns of LGBTQ+ homelessness across the UK (with Dr. Edith England) which aims to improve housing services for our community.

Neil is interested in understanding and fostering community infrastructures of care that can offer both respite and long-term solutions to inequality. Neil’s looks through a spatial lens and takes a multi-scalar approach from wider geographies to more intimate architectures. This involves, i) generating layered and multifaceted understandings of how inequalities are created and intersect, ii) drawing on radical pedagogies to work with people through Participatory Action Research to find solutions, iii) approaching problems as both necessitating immediate action to ensure survival and advocating for structural change.

Neil’s main areas of research are community infrastructures of care (community spaces of care), care ethics, queer space, and community involvement in the built environment (community management of assets, cohousing, community land).